Chapter 48: Synthesis — Learning, Friendships, Goodness

Both The Good Place and the podcast are pulling many threads together as the series moves toward its finish! On The Good Place, Chidi gets back all his memories from life and the afterlife, including the questions he has asked each friend, mentor, and partner along the way and how those conversations have informed his quests for truth and a soulmate. On the podcast, Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett talk again about Talmudic teachings connecting learning and goodness, this time bringing in other teachings about how the people we learn from affect the ethical ideas and commitments we develop. Picking up on the last episode of the show and the podcast, we add a couple more layers and meanings of the word teshuvah: finding answers by going back to the important people from our past, actively remembering and appreciating what we learned with and through them.

Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)

Several times we refer to Pirkei Avot, the section of the Mishnah with ethical maxims of the early Talmudic rabbis — click here to learn more about that treatise more generally

Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 40b (Jon misattributed this to Pirkei Avot)
And already Rabbi Tarfon and the Elders were reclining in the loft of the house of Nit’za in Lod [when] this question was asked before them: Is study [talmud] greater or is action greater? Rabbi Tarfon answered and said: Action is greater. Rabbi Akiva answered and said: Study is greater. Everyone answered and said: Study is greater, since/when study leads to action.

Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 4:1
Ben Zoma says: Which one is wise? The one who learns from every person.

Genesis 2:18-24
In this passage, the Hebrew ha-adam means originally “the human” and eventually “the man” possibly.
YHWH God said: Not good, the human being alone
I shall make for him a corresponding helper.
So YHWH God formed from the earth every animal of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the human to see what the human would call it, and whatever the human called it as a living being, that is its name.
The human gave names to all the animals and to all the birds of the sky, but for the human could not be found a corresponding helper.
So YHWH God made a deep slumber fall on the human, who slept
And God took one of their ribs/sides, and closed the flesh underneath it.
And YHWH God built the rib/sides that God had taken from the human into a woman, and brought in to the human/man.
And the human/man said: This is the time, bone of my bones/essence of my essence, flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Ishah/woman for from Ish/man was she taken.
Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and stick to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Links and References:

This whole episode pairs with our own Chapter 2: Does Study Lead to Change?

Ilana Kurshan, “A Trail of Crumpled Papers on the Floor”

Dan mentioned this New York Times article about the Harvard Study of Adult Development and the 7-Day Happiness Challenge

Jon mentioned this Tiktok about “Timothee Chalamet’s Bar Mitzvah”:

Learn more about Dan and Jon on our Hosts page!

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